XXXVII THE OUTLAW AND THE SHEEPMASTER

HERE lived in the land of Israel, among the southern hills, a man named Nabal, with Abigail his wife. Nabal had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats, and his pastures reached farther than the eye could see; but he had a stingy and sullen temper. Abigail, however, was as generous as she was beautiful.

They were shearing sheep, one day, on Nabal’s farm, and there were good things to eat and drink, and the shepherds were all very merry, when suddenly they saw ten men coming up along the dusty road. One was Abishai, and one was Jonathan, and one was Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and the other seven were lusty outlaws, and they came with a message from their captain, David. “Peace,” they said, “be to thee and to thy house, and unto all thy great possessions. We have protected thy shepherds in the fields, as they will tell thee. We have driven off the Amalekites who came to steal the sheep. Remember us, now, and send a gift to David the son of Jesse.”

And Nabal was very angry. “Who,” he said, “is David, and who is the son of Jesse? There be many servants nowadays that break away every man from his master. Shall I take my bread and my water, and my flesh that I have killed for my shearers, and give it unto men whom I know not whence they be?”

To this the ten men listened in grim silence, and straightway turned about and went away, and Nabal and his shepherds watched them till they were lost to sight over the top of the hill.

But one of the shepherds ran in and told Abigail. “Mistress Abigail,” he cried, “an evil thing has happened. David sent men to salute our master, and he railed on them, and sent them away empty. But, indeed, David and his band were very good to us shepherds. We were not hurt, neither missed we anything, as long as we were in the fields. They were a wall to us, both by night and by day. What shall we do? You know the might of David; he will come and destroy us all. And not one of us dares say a word to Nabal.”

Then Abigail made haste, and took two hundred loaves of bread, and two skin bottles of wine, and five sheep dressed for roasting, and five baskets of parched corn, and a hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs. These she packed on the backs of asses, and said to her servants: “Go on with these before me. I will come after you.” And without a word to Nabal she hurried to meet David.

Thus they climbed the hill, the servants and the mistress, and there at the bottom was a cloud of flying dust, and under the cloud was David with his men, hastening with all speed to punish Nabal.

And when Abigail saw David she alighted and bowed down to the ground before him. “Let not my lord,” she said, “regard my husband, who is a foolish person. See, here is a present, all that you can wish. Do not shed blood without a cause. I know that the Lord will certainly make my lord victorious over all the land, because my lord fights the battles of the Lord and does no evil. And the enemies of my lord shall the Lord sling out as from the middle of a sling. And it shall come to pass, when the Lord shall have made thee ruler over Israel, thou wilt be glad to remember that thou hast shed no blood without a cause, or in revenge.”

And David said to Abigail, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, which sent thee this day to meet me, and blessed be thy advice, and blessed be thou, which hast kept me this day from coming to shed blood, and from avenging myself with my own hand. For in very deed, as the Lord God of Israel liveth, except thou hadst hasted and come to meet me, surely by the morning light both Nabal and all that belong to him should have perished miserably.”

Then David received her gift, and said to her, “Go up in peace to thy house. See, I have harkened to thy voice and have accepted thy person.” So Abigail turned about and went one way, and David turned about and went the other way.

Nabal’s men were eating and drinking, as Abigail came home, sitting at a feast fit for a king. Nabal was drunken, and merry with the foolish merriment of drink. So she told him nothing, either less or more, until the morning light.

Then she said, “Nabal, yesterday your life was in great danger, and I saved you. David was on his way here with four hundred men, and I met him and turned him back.”

And Nabal was so filled with terror that his heart, for the moment, ceased to beat: as if he had been walking in his sleep and had waked to find himself on the very edge of a steep cliff. And his fright and the liquor he had drunk brought on a sudden sickness. He went to bed, and never got up again: and in ten days he was dead.

Now David’s wife, the princess Michal, had been taken from him by the king and married to another man. And, anyhow, it was then the custom for men to have more wives than one. So when the tidings of the death of Nabal came to David, his heart turned toward the brave and beautiful lady who had stopped him on the road. And again a band of messengers from David approached the house which had once been Nabal’s, but this time they asked in David’s name not for bread and meat, but for the hand of Abigail. And Abigail, remembering the grace and courtesy of the bold outlaw, consented.